Hecataeus wrote the work Aegyptiaca[2] or On the Egyptians (the same title of Manetho's later work),[3] both suggestions are based on known titles of other ethnographic works, an account of Egypt’s customs, beliefs and geography, and the single largest fragment from this lost work is held to be Diodorus' account of the Ramesseum, tomb of Osymandyas (i.47-50).[citation needed]

According to the Suda, the 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia, he wrote a treatise on the poetry of Hesiod and Homer, but nothing of them has survived.[5]

His digression on the Jews in Aegiptica was the first mention of them in Greek literature. It was subsequently paraphrased in Diodorus Siculus 40.3.8. A work attributed to him by JosephusOn the Jews has been considered spurious by some.[6] However Pucci and Zeev, in surveying scholarship on this matter find reasons to grant core elements of authenticity in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary.[7]

^Miriam Pucci and Ben Zeev "The Reliability of Josephus Flavius: The Case of Hecateus' and Manentho's Accounts of Jews and Judaism: Fifteen years of contemporary research (1974-1990) Journal for the Studies of Judaism 24 no2. December 1993